By Scott Cantrell | The Dallas Morning News
If that concert wouldn’t have put a smile on your face, you’ve a sterner constitution than your correspondent.
That was the Dallas Chamber Symphony’s concert Tuesday night, at Moody Performance Hall. And the assets started with the program.
It included a rare performance of Francis Poulenc’s delightfully cheeky Piano Concerto — the single-piano concerto, as opposed to the two-piano concerto that does get performed now and then. Anton Nel doubled as soloist here and, opening the program, in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 19 in F major (K. 459). After intermission came the freshest, most stylish Beethoven symphony performance I’ve heard in ages, in this case of the Seventh Symphony.
Nel was clearly having fun, and McKay and the orchestra were alert, communicative partners. Phrases in the Mozart were molded and directed with particular care.
For Richard Wagner, Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony was “the apotheosis of the dance.” So it seemed in Tuesday’s performance.
For all the aerobic exuberance of the first-movement Vivace, there was many a deft turn of phrase. Winds supplied particularly eloquent cameos.
Only in the scherzo’s contrasting trio did McKay pace the music a bit more slowly than Beethoven’s metronome markings for the symphony, but it lacked nothing for energy and purpose. Trumpets and horns supplied stirring summonses in the finale.
Start to finish, this Beethoven was no massive, toga-clad monument, but a living, breathing — and, yes, dancing — creation. As it should be.